Today has been one of the best Black Friday’s I’ve ever experienced–and I didn’t set foot in a mall! Instead, I went to church: Unity Church-Unitarian in Saint Paul, where we celebrated the culmination of a year-long process to explore the source of our cultural and spiritual discontent around the Christmas season. A group of about ten people at Unity has been meeting roughly two times a month since last January under the guidance of Bill Doherty, professor at the University of Minnesota and member of Unity Church-Unitarian. Our group, known as the UU Christmas Reclamation Project, has taken as our mission to generate ideas and practices that our community might embrace in order to reclaim Christmas. And the first fruit of that effort was made manifest today at Unity during an event called “Feeding the Spirit on the Feast Day of Consumption.” To find out more, check out this video from KARE 11, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities.
Church instead of shopping on Black Friday as parishioners reclaim the season.
And to round out our Black Friday experience, my wife Julia and I finally got around to watching What Would Jesus Buy? Definitely worth putting on your Netflix or Blockbuster queue.
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November 29, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Kari
Fantastic post about Black Friday and the good, good work you’re doing with Bill Doherty and Unity Church-Unitarian.
Thanks for sharing!
November 29, 2008 at 7:42 pm
psdlund
Thanks, Kari! It’s been a great group to work with, and the results were more than worth the effort. We’re going to follow-up with some small group activities in the coming weeks, but yesterday’s Black Friday event was the biggie.
November 30, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Shelley
Thanks, Phil. Your leading the discussion on the “real” Christmas added much to the event–people said you were great. I’m looking forward to the Advent Journeys coming up at Unity on Wednesdays.
December 1, 2008 at 1:37 am
psdlund
My pleasure, Shelly. We had a great discussion about the “real” Christmas because the participants were so engaged. I think they were really primed by the Black Friday event with Bill and Ruth and Kevin. You guys did a great job!